They Are At It Again!

Fresh from the editing room!



Another great job boys!

Happy Birthday Naomi!

Sorry for the lack of picture quality but Naomi is cute no matter what the picture quality is like!

Remedy Drive

Jeff, Mr. Gottchuck, Elena, Grant, Joella, and Colton went to see Remedy Drive play at Club 3 Degrees in Minneapolis Saturday night. They sure had fun! When I was in high school there were a lot less Christian artists than there are today. Let's see if I can remember... Amy Grant, Micheal W. Smith, Don Fransisco, Carmon. I am sure there were more but it has been so long besides I was in love with Micheal Jackson back then. Who wasn't?!

Elena took a bunch of pictures and here are a few highlights.

I believe this is the opening band.



Now Remedy Drive.






Here are a few of Grant and Elena with Remedy Drive band members. Sorry you Remedy Drive fans. I do not know the names of the band members. Can you tell that this is "so a mom blog".





Colton got his face autographed along with his cd.



Sweet Joella

A Few Gifts For Naomi

Jeff took the children to the park for a while this afternoon so I could have a little quietish time while I work on a few projects. I did not get the quilt tops finished that I wanted to but I did work on Naomi's birthday gifts since her birthday is tomorrow. I am a big procrastinator.

I finished up her mini tea set and tiny picnic blanket.




This apron will go with a bunch of dollar bin cooking items that I picked up for her.



I found a very cute plate set with matching utensils and I thought a place mat would be fun to go with it. It was fun to make.

Will Lily Figure Out

that three is a crowd when playing a game of checkers?

Will she figure out that good checker strategy is not demonstrated by taking the pieces that are in play and running away with them?



Stay tune!

Why Did I Do That?

I have 12 Golden Regal nine patch blocks to partially make a third Golden Regal quilt but I would need to add some other fabrics to the quilt as well. With that in mind I started looking through my fabric stash and look what I found all gobbled up with my fabric scraps! Three partially finished quilt tops. Now whatever was I thinking that I did not finish them? I actually do remember making them but for the life of me can not remember why I did not finish them. I believe these were started before our first three children came home from Liberia so that would mean I started them 2005/06 maybe. They were all gobbled up together so it most likely was a fast clean up I needed to do and just forgot about them.

Sorry for the crazy picture of this one. I think this one needs a few borders or something. If I remember right this quilt pattern was a table topper quilt. So far it is a 48" square.




This one is just missing a few borders as well. Easy enough to finish.



Look at these pretty log cabin squares! The pictures do not do them justice. Elena has my good camera with her. Jeff took Elena ,Grant,and a few friends to a Remedy Drive concert tonight up in the cities.



Most of them are missing the very last black outer strip. Sadly, I could not find the fabric strips I intended to use for them so I will just take off the black fabric strips and add some other fabric.

One Down But A Bunch More To Go!

I finished up my Golden Regal Version II quilt top this afternoon. I do not know if you would notice but I accidentally grabbed the 2 1/2 inch strips that were intended for the binding and used them for the inner border instead. The inner border really was supposed to be 1 1/2 inch strips. I did not even notice my mistake until I was looking over the pictures just now. Oops. Too late. That is what I get for trying to rush to get 'one more thing done' before I tended to fuss bucket Lily. No harm ,though. I have a Golden Regal version III I am working on now so I will just use the cut 1 1/2 inch strips for that one. Anyway, the quilt top still looks good!

What Do You Think?

My Hip To Be Square (Version II) quilt top did not turn out that bad after all.



This weekend will be pretty busy but in-between the business my sewing goal is to get as many of my waiting-to-be-pieced quilt tops finished. I must have at least 8 quilt tops cut and waiting for their turn to be sewn. I might realistically only get two or three quilt tops finished. I must have six others waiting to be quilted but I will save that for another time. I am in the quilt top making mood this weekend.

I thought this would be interesting to share...Yesterday, Jeff walked over to a neighbor's garage sale with Lily and a few of our other children. The kind neighbor looked at Lily and she started screaming SO VERY loud. Who would have thought a baby with 15 others living with her would be afraid of strangers. Of course, we are not strangers to her but still I think it is a little funny.


Have a nice weekend!!

My Artistic Eye

A few blogs that I have been visiting lately have posted some very pretty pictures of the different flowers that are popping up around their yards. I thought I would snap a few of the flowers in bloom in my own yard to share.

As you can see with the use of my artistic eye I created a vision of beauty out of just ordinary bothersome Dandelions. It is hard to remember that these are just weeds isn't it? Don't let their beauty fool you.



How about this photo I so fittingly named Dandelions In A Rusty Wagon.



Now in all seriousness, Alan set about to photograph our blossoming Crab Apple Tree. He did a very good job.






I had a few minutes this evening to start on another quilt top. As you can see I still have three of the five rows to sew together.




The quilt above that I am working on is exactly the same quilt pattern and fabric as this quilt below that I made last fall. (A woman in Australia bought the below quilt. Very neat to think something I made is all the way in Australia!) The only difference is in the quilt above I randomly placed the fabric. Making that change sure made it a totally different quilt didn't it? I might tend towards liking the more orderly quilt version below but sometimes it is hard to envision the final result until the quilt is all the way finished so maybe the top quilt will look good when it is all finished. I'll let you see it when it is all done.

My Day In Pictures

As most of you who visit my blog might have picked up on is the fact that I am a very visual person. So I add lots of pictures to my blog!


I thought I would snap a picture of my hair handy work. I mentioned yesterday that I braided Grace's hair. I love Grace's hair in braids like this. Anyway, I'm getting a little better at making clean straight parts but still need a lot of practice. The time it takes me to braid like this is now a little less than an hour. Not bad considering it took me many hours when our first set of girls came. Notice my use of the colored binders.





Now I want to show you Joyce's hair handy work. BEAUTIFUL isn't it!? Look at those clean parts and beautiful braids! I am not sure how long it took Joyce to do Odell's hair. Maybe a few hours at the very most. All the girls would like Joyce to braid their hair. Next on Joyce's list will be Naomi. Ok, do you see the lack of colored binders on Odell's hair? Joyce said the secret is braiding all the way to the ends of each braid and then you do not need binders. I have tried it but my hands are too clumsy.





The girls did a little coloring today. I told them to act natural as I took the picture but they could not stop smiling. Grace was the only one who did not know I was taking a picture.



Joel and Lily were playing in a little blanket house while I finally finished quilting that quilt I showed yesterday.I just need to add the binding. Lily would not sit still in the blanket house long enough for me to take a picture of both her and Joel. She had found a crayon and ran off before I could take the crayon away or take the picture.



And of course, my gentle hearted Josh with beautiful flowers for me.